"Tasting" Cognac

Cognac it’s a little town in the west of France, not far from Angouleme. As you could figure it out by its name, here you can find the most important French cognac producers. I only had time to visit one of them and it wasn’t easy to choose. So I picked up the oldest one: Martel

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With an imposing building as its headquarters, Martel rises at the bottom of the Cognac’s main street. All tours are guided and a prior signing up is needed. I took the English tour, because it was the only one available when I got there. Out guide was charming and at the same time he had something of old brandy refinement.

There were 5 major things that I discovered during the visit:

1) brandy is the distillation of wine from anywhere in the world. All cognac is brandy but not all brandy is cognac

2) you can smell cognac in each and every room

3) thy really care about their tourists, because ea whole setting was developed in order for us to understand how brandy is produced, deposited, packed and delivered to the final consumers

4) their packaging is extraordinary! Martel counts more than 100 labels since its release

5) for the cognac as well as for the wine, prices are increasing proportionally with the age of the drinks…and they can get astronomic (1850 euros)!

If not, Cognac is a small idyllic town, in the west of France…